1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a device for opening a cassette lid by means of rotating movement when a cassette is moved from an upper position to a lower position in an apparatus such as a cassette video tape recorder (VTR).
2. Description of the Related Art
In conventional techniques of cassette VTRs, as shown in FIG. 1, a cassette 202 inserted in a cassette holder 201 is moved downward from an upper position (insertion position) to a lower position (loaded position). During this lowering operation, a cassette lid 203, which is disposed on the front side of the cassette 202 in such a manner that it can be rotated freely, is opened and a part of a tape is pulled out from the cassette 202. In FIG. 1, reference numerals 204 and 205 denote arms for moving the cassette holder 201 up and down, and reference numeral 206 denotes an up-spring for urging the cassette holder 201 toward the upper position.
In the above arrangement, an opening member 207 for opening the cassette lid 203 is fixed to a chassis 208 of the main body of the VTR so that when the cassette 202 is moved downward the lower end 203a of the cassette lid 203 comes in contact with the opening member 207 and thus the opening member 207 pushes the cassette lid 203 upward thereby rotating the cassette lid 203 toward an open position. When the cassette 202 has reached the lowest position, the cassette lid 203 is fully opened.
In the conventional arrangement described above, however, since the opening member 207 is positioned relative to the chassis 208, if a cassette 202 has a thin cassette lid 203 (that is, the thickness of the lid in the direction from the front side to the back side of the cassette is small) and thus only a small portion can come in contact with the opening member 207, a contact failure between the lid opening member and the cassette lid often occurs owing to variations or clearances in dimensions of a cassette loading mechanism, or owing to insufficient insertion of the cassette 202 into the cassette holder 201, which results in an opening failure of the cassette lid.